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Extracted Text (OCR)
on trade, tax cuts, and infrastructure spending. (1) The doves at the Fed
have been silenced as, under President Trump, the US policy mix will likely
be less lop-sided and the emphasis will be on Arrow 3, with Arrow | being
downgraded. I think the effective demotion of the Fed has just begun. Its
independence will likely be challenged, as it should be, in my personal
view. November 8 marked the beginning of the end of the financial
repression in the US. (2) Generating outsized economic growth will be key
to settling several important inconsistencies in macro. I will elaborate on
this point below. But the market trends witnessed since November 8 will
not be sustained unless Mr Trump’s policies indeed lead to significantly
higher nominal GDP growth. (3) The mainstream media remain negative on
Mr Trump, but this will keep the hurdle low, and in turn pressure President
Trump to deliver early in 2017 and thus for him to impress favourably. A
shift away from identity politics, in my view, based on my personal
experience from Taiwan, should lead to positive economic
progress. Investors won’t need to wait long for there to be more concrete
announcements on the various parts of Arrow 3, including both the content
of the policies as well as their sequencing. (4) FWIW, my two policy
recommendations to the reformers are (1) design an effective global taxation
scheme to properly tax multi-national corporations and (11) adopt industrial
policies to help countries focus on their comparative advantages. The US,
UK, Japan, and Italy are all prime candidates to do (11). (5) The dollar is
already moderately over-valued, but this will not prevent it from
strengthening further, especially against the EM currencies. Think in terms
of ‘growth alpha’ and ‘growth beta.’ Much of EM, including China since
February of this year, have not possessed ‘growth alpha’ and have continued
to rely on ‘growth beta’ vis-a-vis the rest of the world. I struggle to think of
key reforms that EM countries have embarked on in recent years: even
countries like France and Italy have undertaken more reforms than most EM
countries. Squeezed by (i) a more hawkish Fed, (i1) a China that will
continue to soft land, and (111) a potentially more inward-looking US, EM
will struggle without ‘growth alpha.’ I think we may be entering into a
period of differentiation among the EM markets: those that have ‘growth
alpha’ will be rewarded while those that continue to rely on ‘growth beta’
will not. (6) The world according to Trump will be more Darwinian for
countries and less Darwinian for US citizens.This notion applies to investing
in EM, to countries’ growth prospects, and to international competition —
(potentially) very different from the last few years, when ‘the Fed was the
only game in town’ and everyone and everything floated higher by central
bank liquidity... In any case, the dollar should be in a good position to
thrive, I think.
Economic Olympics. The markets are no longer driven only by the Fed and
central bank policies, but by forward-looking policy inclinations. The ‘false
economy’ that central banks have nurtured will gradually be replaced by real
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